


Ex Gratia

by CytosineSkald



Series: Missing Scenes [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Could also just be friends, Could be a ship if you want it to be, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 23:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18082601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CytosineSkald/pseuds/CytosineSkald
Summary: “Please help me with this. I need to do this.”Jag knew he couldn’t say no when she asked him. His head ached from listening to Moffs argue, his hands ached from paperwork the likes of which he wasn’t sure he had ever seen, his nerves hummed like overstrung instruments, officials and advisers all trying to teach him the proper way things should be done -- but when he had been able to spare time he had gone to see Jaina, and she had asked him this… it was this one thing in the world. Over everything.





	Ex Gratia

**Author's Note:**

> Could be shippy if you want it to be. Doesn't have to be. :)

“Please help me with this. I need to do this.”

Jag knew he couldn’t say no when she asked him. His head ached from listening to Moffs argue, his hands ached from paperwork the likes of which he wasn’t sure he had ever seen, his nerves hummed like overstrung instruments, officials and advisers all trying to teach him the proper way things should be done -- but when he had been able to spare time he had gone to see Jaina, and she had asked him this… it was this one thing in the world. Over everything.

She had been curled on a chair by the window, split open cheek reduced to a thin scar. Her arms had been wrapped around her knees, and the light had made her look just as pale and wasted as she was. Fresh out of bacta treatment.  He remembered being in bed as a younger man, before things went bad, watching her dress, seeing the expanse of clean skin from neck to hips down her back, and like so many other things, he knew it was a memory. He could guess that under the robe she wore, her back would still be a mess of burn scars that would never quite heal back to the way it was, no matter how good her hospital care was. Maybe that was better. He couldn’t imagine she would want it any other way.

She had looked up at him, sitting like a withered plant in that chair, so much smaller than she was, looking frail, hollow-cheeked and eyes sunk and bruised-looking. She had held out her hand for him to take and asked him.

“Help me?”

How could he say no?

Jag tossed another load of sticks onto the pile as Jaina sat at the trunk of a tree, looking exhausted and having been outright  _ forbidden _ to help. She watched him lob wood into a pile for her, occasionally raising her voice to offer to help him. He told her no every time. So instead she sat next to what they had stolen from the Alliance, holding onto it like she was afraid it would walk away, or disappear. Jacen Solo’s corpse, of course, could do neither. She held the corpse’s one remaining hand between both of hers, rubbing it between her palms like she could massage some warmth back into it, even though her hands had been cold since she had come out of the bacta. She held the hand in her lap and talked to him quietly, almost under her breath, reaching out to smooth his hair -- she said things Jag couldn’t hear and didn’t want to. It would be painfully personal, whatever it was, and achingly private. Something for the Jacen that she’d loved, and not for anyone else.

She’d asked him to help her steal her brother’s corpse, and he should have said no. He should have. He was a foreign head of state now, fresh-minted and busy. The Empire was already in a dire spot as far as relations went, and here was their head (the idea was still strange and new) stealing corpses of war criminals. He shouldn't have. He should not have done. He should have perched on the arm of her chair, the one that had made her look so small and so frail, held her hand and explained why he couldn’t. She would have understood, he thought, in time.

But he hadn’t. He’d taken her hand, rubbed it between his palms until it was warm, like she was doing for her brother’s corpse, and nodded.

“Okay.”

Because he had lost three siblings. Three times he had done what Jaina was doing now for the second, but for none of his three had there been the chance to do what he did now. None of them had had enough left of them to bury -- or to burn. He remembered being thirteen and hearing his mother’s sudden, wrenching, shrieking wail for her eldest son, blown into stardust. He remembered being eighteen, standing next to his only remaining brother and feeling their father’s hand heavy on his shoulder, squeezing hard enough to bruise as they were told that their little sister had died the same way. He was twenty-five and his last brother had been consumed by fire, as a picket destroyer under his command blew apart in combat.

And then he’d died, in his way.

His poor mother had held his face between both of her hands, clutching like claws, not wanting to let go. She had drunk in his face and pet his hair and stuffed family holos in his bag and her nails had left red streaks on his arm as he’d pulled away to go into exile. There was nothing left of him for her to bury, either.

So he piled sticks together for Jaina, high and wide enough for a pyre -- because she  deserved better than that. She had saved worlds. She had saved them all, and it had only cost her her heart. She deserved better.

The Hapan sun was low when he finished and slumped next to her at the foot of her tree.

“It’s ready.”

She had shifted so her brother’s head was in her lap, her hands, white-knuckled and thin, spindly fingers closed spiderlike around the one of his that remained. The corpse itself… was difficult to look at. He was still dressed all in black, a Sith Lord, and the remains of their fight were bared to the air, displayed, impossible to hide, as Jaina’s scars would be hers to wear for the rest of her life. Jacen was a gaunt man now, like he hadn’t ever been when Jag had known him, and paler than he remembered though he wasn’t sure if that was true colour or just… death. Jag pried one of her hands from around Jacen’s and pulled it away. She was cold, but she squeezed his hand with what must have been all the strength she had.

“You don’t have to do this. We could just take him home. Let them deal with it.”

Jaina shook her head, fast, determined, and her jaw had that famous Solo stubbornness written all through. 

“No I have to. I need to end this properly.”

“Alright. Shall I…?”

“No,” she said, suddenly soft, gentle though gentleness had never been her strength, “This part let me do.”

He knew what Jedi could do. He had seen it. Jag had watched Luke Skywalker accomplish the supernatural, had felt Alema Rar short circuit his brain, had felt Jaina toss him back without touching him. He knew. But watching this woman, small and slight, too thin and injured, lift a full grown man without laying a finger on him — he knew it was an effort for her in the Force, and there was a bead of sweat rolling down her temple with the strain, but it was always amazing. Always a bit like watching something that shouldn’t be possible, something that wasn’t real.

She was the one who set her brother on his pyre, and arranged his cape neatly around him so that it covered the stump of his arm and the fatal wounds on his torso. It was, in its way, like she was tucking in a child for bed. She leaned across and pressed a kiss to his forehead, muttering apologies and love and guilt again in a way that made Jag lower his eyes. It wasn’t right, sibling killing sibling. Luke had passed the responsibility to Jaina to avoid killing out of vengeance, but Jag wasn’t quite sure whether it was worth it. He wasn’t sure the great Luke Skywalker had been right. But he was sure that if Jaina had died there instead in that little incinerator room, Jacen wouldn’t have done this for her. Jag knew — he  _ knew  _ — that Caedus would have tossed her corpse into the fire to burn, anonymous and forgotten in the  _ Anakin Solo _ ’s bowels, and her family would have had nothing left to mourn but black bones indistinguishable from however many others had been tossed in with her. The galaxy had never been fair, but it seemed criminal.

Jaina unhooked her lightsaber, hefted it in her hand for a moment, and when it lit, it cast eerie violet shadows across the forest. She touched it to the bottommost branches of the pyre Jag had made, and barely-contained light burned against the wood and caught flame. The fire was hungry, and caught fast, eating its way upward until it found the edges of Caedus’s clothes and ate inward, consuming him. For a moment Jaina was a black silhouette against the flames, violet lightsaber in hand, and Jag wasn’t sure she knew what a romantic figure she cut. Tragic, but like something out of an old ballad, like the last scene out of a Corellian epic. 

When it got too hot, she backed away, coming to stand next to him, lightsaber back on her belt and grasping desperately at his hand like it was an anchor. Her lips were a thin line, eyes bright, streaks down her face, but she held her composure.

“Now it’s over,” she said, and her eyes seemed almost orange in the firelight, like a warmer mockery of her brother’s. “It’s done now.”

The words seemed trite, and a part of him regretted them even as he said them, looking back toward the pyre. “I’m sorry this happened. All of it.”

“So am I.” She pressed a hand to her lips and breathed deeply in, deeply out, and her voice seemed an octave higher than it should have been, watery and thin. “It’s not fair.”

“No it’s not.”

He held her hand as she composed herself, deep breaths and looking up at the sky to keep it in, and eventually, though he could almost  _ feel _ her heartbreak and he was no Jedi at all, she got a rein on her voice. Her palm was cold and sweaty against his, but he held it, wishing he could take some of her pain.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” she said, looking at the flames where her brother used to be, “I don’t think I know how to be a single person. I’ve always been more than just me. First with… with Jacen. It was like breathing, almost -- almost telepathic. And then with Zekk, and now he’s gone. I’m not sure I know how to just be  _ me _ .”

The pyre smouldered around its edges, a pillar of smoke rising between the trees.

“You’ll figure it out. You’re the strongest person I know, Jaina Solo.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. It’s why we love you.”

She was quiet, and when he glanced down at her, she was staring at the fire still, flickering shadows across her face. Ash had stuck to the places where tears had been, like dark pencil drawn there. She squeezed his hand.

“Thank you. For everything.”

“You don’t have to thank--.”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

Jag looked back towards the fire, where Caedus was nothing but a blaze of light. Caedus had rescued Jag’s sister, once, when he was still Jacen Solo. He had saved him from mourning another sibling. Whatever else he had become, Wyn Fel was alive and Jag assumed well because of Jacen Solo. He supposed he owed him that much.

“Then… you’re welcome.”

It was the best he could do.


End file.
